Small Town
by Elvaro
Summary: What if two small town girls met the Doctor? And why are there aliens in the most boring town on the planet? Rated T for very mild coarse language. Contains original characters, so be forewarned.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: BBC owns all the rights to Doctor Who and all characters, villains, and other copyrighted material associated with it. If I did own Doctor Who, I certainly wouldn't be writing this...**

* * *

I lived in a tiny, little town (about a mile square) in rural America. My hometown had been a stop on a railroad, but that railway has long since been abandoned. In more recent times, the old railway had been converted into a "Rail-to-Trail" and the old depot has been converted into a very nice independently owned restaurant.

I lived about five miles outside of town and, for that reason, I never made many childhood friends. It didn't help that I was a self-confessed bibliophile with an odd taste for obscure legends.

It wasn't until I entered the local high school that I found myself making friends with other misfits.

I was the geekiest of them: I was of average height for a girl my age, skinny, dirty blond and bespectacled. I was never to be seen without a book and never wore anything that could have been described as stylish. I was a proud member of the Quizbowl team and played the flute in band. That combination alone should have made me a social outcast at any other school but, thanks to the immensely tiny nature of the student body, my school was different.

My best friend was a short, dark-haired girl named Jeni. She was smart and had claimed numerous times that she was really a genius who hid her slightly insane mind by pretending to be an average, well-behaved student.

Everyone who saw the two of us as friends thought that the match-up was a little odd. Jeni was abrasive, outspoken and even violent on occasion. I was quiet, thoughtful, and a pacifist in the extreme. Some people even commented that the two of us being friends were akin to the Devil making friends with an angel.

Jeni never did figure out why I enjoyed being her friend, although her prevailing theory was that fragile, defenseless Elisabeth hung around her as protection. I, on the other hand, was fairly confident I knew why she enjoyed having me as a friend: for some unknown reason, I was one of the few people that were not terrified of her, and I was the only person patient enough to put up with all of her antics.

I lived a very ordinary, safe life until I was seventeen. That was when my life changed. A lot.

* * *

My high school was a very well-meaning, if very under funded school. The average size of a graduating class was about 75 students. In other words, everybody knew everybody else and there were very few secrets.

To say it was odd then, when four new students showed up all at once and nobody knew anything about them would have been the understatement of the year. Nobody seemed to know where they lived or where they'd come from. For their part, they didn't seem inclined to disclose this to any of the numerous students that tried to reach out to them.

After the initial "new kid" buzz died down (much too quickly in my opinion) the four students did not disperse into any of the established groups that were a tiny town's version of cliques. Instead the four students stayed together, forming their own group that no one was willing to approach.

Most people might have brushed off their odd behavior, but I had grown up on tales of the supernatural, and I was fairly convinced that some slight form of precognition ran on my mother's side of the family. By any means, the foursome gave me the willies.

They never spoke, unless asked a direct question and sometimes not even then. I had yet to see them eat anything (of course, with cafeteria food being the way it was that might not have been anything unusual). Then there was the way they would seem to stalk people. Perhaps it was only my paranoia, but I often noticed that they would take turns staring at one person for the entirety of lunch or class. They were always immaculately dressed (which was unusual for boys in my grade) and tended to dress in grays, browns, and blacks. They looked a lot alike; all four had pale skin, dark hair, and dark eyes. This, coupled with their tendency to dress alike, lent itself to the way I saw them as interchangeable. The few times I had been forced to sit near one of them I discovered that, despite their nice clothes, they stank of something I didn't recognize. Everyone, student and staff alike, gave them a wide berth.

* * *

**Author's Note: I know this is where the first chapter originally ended, but I think it wasn't interesting enough to hold most people's attention, so I'm going to combine this chapter with the original chapter two.**

* * *

"Don't you think the new kids are creepy?" I asked Jeni at lunch finally.

She looked over at me, as if I were the insane one and said, "You're actually not obsessing over those UFO's today?"

I smiled my best apologetic smile and replied, "Well, I figured you didn't want to hear any more about green and blue lights in the sky. Also, I didn't feel like getting called stupid and crazy today."

"You really need to stop reading those UFO books before they corrupt what's left of your mind," she continued unabated.

"Okay, what about… huh… what's-his-name that was in English today? What'd he ask Mrs. Wysocki for?" I asked hoping to change the subject before I got called stupid again.

"I don't know, but Mrs. Wysocki wasn't very happy that he interrupted her review was she?" Jeni let me be for the moment, content to yammer on about our English teacher's odd reaction to what was, apparently, the new sub's request to speak with a few of her students.

After a few yup's and half-hearted nods from me, Jeni realized I was losing interest in the conversation and said, "All right, go back to sleep, Liz."

I instantly reached for my book that I had left on the table next to my lunch. It was a relatively old book I'd found on one of the shelves in the school library. It would have been terribly overdue if it hadn't been for the fact that I hadn't actually bothered to check it out. I figured that no one would miss it as it, like many of the books in the school library's nonfiction section, had not been checked out since shortly before I was born.

The book in question was a UFO conspiracy book. It had a big, plump section on Area 51 and the Roswell crash. It also had a chapter on alien involvement in the building of everything from the pyramids in Giza to the Empire State Building.

I was almost to the chapter on "Alien Time Travel" when the bell rang to signal the end of lunch. I snapped the book shut and collected my lunchbox, hopped up from the table and sped walked to my locker, dodging the religious crazies that gathered around the pole in front of the bathrooms everyday to pray.

I spun my com and yanked open my locker. I grabbed my binder out of the bottom of my locker and manipulated it with one hand so the flat side was up and my book was underneath it while I simultaneously tossed my lunchbox into the spot I had just vacated with my other hand. Balancing my binder and book in the crook of my elbow I pulled my history and physics textbooks out of my locker and slid them into place on top of my binder. Careful not to drop the precariously balanced load, I switched arms and pulled my book out from underneath my binder to put it on top of the textbooks. This done, I wrapped both arms around the load to make sure it was secure and headed off to class.

I had to speed walk to History because it was at the far end of the building from my locker and only just made it before the bell rang.

Despite my interest in my book and the premise of the next chapter, my History teacher lectured for a long time and, being so close to exams, I didn't want to miss anything important. Once he finally gave us our work, he handed out a large enough assignment that I only barely finished before the bell rang for the end of class.

* * *

It wasn't as much of a rush to my last hour class as it was to sixth hour. I wandered into the Distance Learning Lab a full three minutes early and glanced around the empty classroom. Well, it should have been empty. Mr. Crance usually wasn't in the room when I arrived, but I had forgotten that he wasn't at school today. I jumped involuntarily at the sight of the sub. According to the blackboard, his name was Mr. Smith. He was very tall and thin and was wearing a blue suit with brown pinstripes. He was currently writing out what looked suspiciously like a complex physics problem on the board. I hurried to my seat and dumped my things on the desk. I sat down and waited for the rest of the class to trickle in.

Next in the door was my friend Abbey, who still sat across the room from me and then Jeni who, despite her assigned seat being in the row of tables behind me, still sat to my left everyday. Last was Kym, who usually never sat down in a seat, but today decided to sit down next to Abbey.

It was an interesting thing that Jeni hadn't been in Physics at the beginning of the year. Not more than a few months before, she'd suddenly been transferred out of her Chemistry class and into the Physics class.

Of course, by this point that was no longer a topic of speculation and gossip and I didn't think anything of it as I picked up my book and began to read about time-travel and aliens.

"Don't you do anything in this class?" asked Mr. Smith in an odd accent that I didn't immediately place. He sounded confused and, if he were new to subbing, I didn't blame him.

"Not since the seniors left," I muttered without putting my book down and flipping to the next page. It was true enough that the four of us, the only juniors taking physics, hadn't done anything since we'd taken the final exam (or in my case: exempted out of it) with the seniors, who had graduated two weeks earlier.

"But this is Physics. Newton's Laws. The Theory of Relativity. E=mc2. Don't you want to learn something?"

"Not if we can avoid it," someone muttered. I suspected that it was Kym. "Can I go work on yearbook now?" Definitely Kym.

"Don't you ever stop reading that?" asked Jeni, waving her hand in front of the page I was reading.

"No," I mumbled. I snapped the book shut. It had been getting a little strange anyway. The author, who I strongly suspected had been locked up in a loony bin after this book was published, kept talking about an alien that had repeatedly visited Earth for centuries. "The Doctor," the author claimed was a time traveler who had been present at all sorts of events. He included a picture of a supposed wood etching of the Doctor's "time machine." It looked fake to me. Since when did they have police boxes in 12th century Germany?

"Is that book of yours any good?" asked Mr. Smith.

Everyone in the room groaned.

I frowned. It wasn't my fault I could get carried away when I was describing a good book. "It's different," I started. "On one hand it makes some really good arguments about some pretty unexplainable events, like the New York City Central Park massacre of 1930. On the other hand, I've gotten to this chapter on possible time travel and it gets just plain weird. It keeps talk about certain images cropping up in old artifacts and manuscripts the world over. Some of the stories that the author tells are really creative."

"Time travel is impossible," Jeni broke in. She was fiddling with her brand new phone. She wouldn't say how she had procured it, but I suspected that she had lifted it off of someone.

"But wouldn't it be interesting?" I argued right back in one of our friendship-old banters. "I mean, to see the things that really changed the world."

"If you could avoid screwing it up," Jeni argued right back.

"Yeah, well, what if…" I started.

"Nah-uh, time travel is a bad idea," Jeni interrupted me.

I shrugged my shoulders, "Whatever. I still think it would be neat."

I considered picking my book up again, but the seriously creepy story about mutant pig-people living in the sewers of Manhattan was getting to me so I decided against that.

In an uncharacteristically bold move, I asked, "Mr. Smith, what do you think?"

"About time travel? Nah… just a really good science fiction idea…" he muttered uncertainly.

I suddenly recognized the accent and blurted out: "Are you from Britain?"

"No," he answered looking a bit puzzled.

"But you have a British accent, I thought," I mumbled, worried that I might have been rude.

"Oh, well, my folks were from there." He sounded as if he was trying to cover for a slip, but that might have been my mom's paranoia coming through.

I looked over at what Jeni was doing. She was pressing buttons rapidly on the phone and muttering quietly to herself. She finally smacked it and shoved it in her pocket.

* * *

**Author's note: I'm afraid that not much is happening yet. Don't worry, the next chapter will be much better. I hope.**


	2. Chapter 2

Mr. Smith let us do what we liked for the remainder of the hour. (That is, Kym left like always, and Jeni, Abbey and I read for the hour.)

Abbey left immediately after the bell rang, but Jeni was going to walk to the library that day and I was always slow getting out of the classroom.

"Why do you always carry so much stuff?" asked Jeni for the third time this week.

"Because, I'm lazy and I won't go put the extra junk back in my locker," I answered almost automatically, as I carefully stacked my textbooks on my binder.

I heard someone shuffle into the classroom and automatically assumed that detention was being held in this room tonight. It took me a moment to realize that today was Friday and there was no detention.

I turned around to see the four new students whose names I had never bothered to learn standing right behind me.

"Who has it?" asked one of them in an eerie, echoing voice.

My immediate reaction was to be spooked and confused. However, I'd spent far too much of my time reading science fiction novels to not recognize that this sort of scenario. This was a demand for something that _they_, whoever they were, should not be allowed to have. Of course, if this was one of my books, the main character ought to have demanded to know what it was that they were after, why they were after it, and who they were.

"Can I help you?" asked Mr. Smith cheerfully.

"Where is the Binary Modification Device, human?" asked the same student with an obvious disgust in his voice.

"The what?" I asked. I never did figure out why I said that. It was probably a reflex reaction from whenever I thought I had misheard someone.

"The Binary Modification Device," one of the four said. "We know it is in this room. It was activated only forty of your Earth minutes ago."

"Never heard of it," said Jeni calmly. "Let's go, Elisabeth, before the library closes."

"You will not leave," said the apparent leader of what I was now coming to realize was a group of aliens. As he said that, each of them pulled small gun-like devices from their pockets.

In the back of my mind, I was still examining everything from the point of view of a movie, and I knew that if someone didn't do something clever very soon, we would all probably be dead in the next few minutes.

I lowered my books onto the desk, perhaps thinking that I didn't want to be encumbered by them if I had to run but out of pure habit I kept holding onto my library book.

"Who had the Device?" demanded the alien pointing its gun at Mr. Smith.

Mr. Smith smiled enthusiastically and replied, "Brilliant. You mean to say you're real aliens? From another planet?"

Jeni grabbed my arm and began to drag me toward the outside door, while the delusional substitute teacher distracted the firearm wielding aliens.

"Don't move, human children," said another of the aliens as it whipped its gun to point straight at Jeni and I.

"Damn." The word slipped through my lips before I could stop it. "Oops." There went my perfect record. _And only you, Elisabeth, would think about that when you're about to die._

Suddenly a loud buzzing noise filled the air and the alien's guns sparked and smoked. _They're broken! _I thought.

Jeni and I didn't bother to stick around to find out why; we turned and ran for the relative safety of the outdoors.

* * *

Another useful thing about small towns was that you always knew the best places to hide. We darted across the parking lot, completely oblivious to the fact that our fellow students were carelessly flooring their vehicles in their hurry to depart the school for home. By some miracle, we managed to cross the parking lot at top speed without being hit by anyone. We made a beeline across the school service drive and into the forest that lay just on the other side of it.

Despite my having been on track, neither one of us was in that good of shape, so the moment we were certain that we were far enough into the trees, we both doubled over and gasped for air.

Suddenly someone (or something, the pessimistic part of me supplied unhelpfully) grabbed our shoulders. I can't say how Jeni reacted, but I jumped comically.

"This isn't the safest place to be," Mr. Smith told us.

I relaxed the moment I heard his voice. _Not one of the aliens. _"Better than back there," I shuddered. "What was that noise anyway?"

"Sonic screwdriver," Mr. Smith answered as he continued to walk into the woods. With no better idea as to what to do, Jeni and I followed after him.

I'd meant to direct that question at Jeni, my personal repertoire of information on all things military – top secret or not – so I was surprised when he had answered my question.

"A sonic what?" Jeni snapped, annoyed that he knew what had allowed our escape and she did not.

"Screwdriver," Mr. Smith repeated, while he dug the device out of his pocket to show us. It was roughly cylindrical with only one button on it that I could see and a tip that might or might not have been able to light up.

"How do you know so much about aliens, Mr. Smith?" I asked. Then as an afterthought, I added: "Who are you?"

"Oh, I'm the…" he let the rest of the sentence trail off, as we came into view of a particular sight.

A blue wooden box with the words "Police Public Call Box" inscribed in white paint above the door was standing in the middle of the woods.

"The what?" demanded Jeni, annoyed that he had not finished his sentence.

I recognized the image from my book, and that meant that Mr. Smith could be none other than…

"The Doctor?" I finished for him.

* * *

**Author's Note: Now I've gotten to the interesting part. I hope I've done a decent job so far, and I have to thank schwans for so kindly reviewing my poor writing. Sadly this is the end of this chapter, but I'll update soon. **


	3. Chapter 3

I felt a tiny bit faint. Almost being shot by aliens that were after something that I had never heard of: that was one thing, but going from reading about the Doctor's exploits to meeting him: that was something else entirely.

"Yep," he confirmed. "That's me. But they'll be after us and I don't think a half a mile is enough to lose them. Come on."

"Elisabeth?" Jeni asked when I didn't immediately follow.

"It's finally happened," I mumbled through my shock.

"What's finally happened?" the Doctor asked immediately concerned.

"And of all the crappy luck," I muttered. "It's just not fair!"

"Is she okay?" the Doctor asked Jeni, who shrugged in response.

"I've finally lost my mind and I get stuck with the demented imaginings of some UFO crackpot!" I laughed hysterically. "You've finally managed to make me lose it, Jen. And I thought I was doing so well, too. You finally managed to corrupt my poor, itty-bitty mind. Oh, crap, this is not going to go over well at home. We just don't have the money to hire a decent psychiatrist…"

"Elisabeth, you have _not _lost your mind," Jeni said, rolling her eyes. I would have considered this very kind of her until she tacked on: "Idiot. You don't have this good of an imagination anyway."

I looked at the police box doubtfully and then at the Doctor, who gave me an encouraging smile.

"All right, on the off chance that I am not having some sort of mental breakdown, maybe I'd better not stay here," I muttered hesitantly and then added hopefully: "Maybe I'm in shock?"

"Yeah, come on, Liz," Jeni said as she grabbed my arm and dragged me along after the Doctor.

The Doctor quickly walked up to the police box and slotted a perfectly ordinary looking, golden-colored key into a latch on the door. With a small flourish he turned the key, pushed opened the door, and motioned us to go on inside of the tiny, wooden structure.

A little puzzled, Jeni and I stepped inside.

"Are you sure I haven't lost it?" I repeated to Jeni as I tried to wrap my head around what I was seeing. "'Cause this is really, really not possible."

"Yep, it's bigger on the inside," the Doctor confirmed, trying but not altogether succeeding at hiding his amusement at our awe-struck expressions.

"I'm insane," I stated. "There isn't any way around it. I've finally lost my mind."

I took a dozen or so steps forward, still half-hoping that I would crash into the back wall of the tiny box, up a small ramp until I stood next to a console with strange glyphs and devices on it and a glowing column that stretched up to a ceiling that must have been twelve feet above my head. There was a strange and very alien hum being given off by the console that was somehow oddly comforting. I turned around and took in the coral-like support structures and the honey-combed walls.

I absently-mindedly set my book down on the chair next to the console as the Doctor explained: "This is my TARDIS. It's my spaceship and time machine."

I saw Jeni's eyes light up like a kid's on Christmas Day. Whether or not this was an insane delusion I knew enough to say: "Don't even think about it, Jen."

"Ah, can't I?" she grumbled, pouting at me.

"_You_? In a time machine?" I shuddered at the very thought of such a disaster.

* * *

**Author's Note: Sorry about the delay in updating and how short this chapter is. I can guarantee that the next chapter will be longer, and hopefully much more exciting. Much thanks to schwans and wishyfishy for reviewing... it is _so _nice to know that someone is reading this, other than me!**


	4. Chapter 4

"So," the Doctor said as he ran up to the console. "Here's the question: Why would they pick up a signal for a Binary Modification Device at a high school on Earth?"

"Who are they?" I asked.

"Good question," he replied as he flipped switches and spun dials on the console. "I'm not sure, but considering how many species there are to choose from that's not all that surprising. Not to worry, I always figure it out sooner or later. But they obviously aren't supposed to have a Superhacker. They probably intended to steal it from the ship that crashed around here not long ago…"

"Superhacker?" I interrupted. "As in: it hacks into computers?"

"Well," he drawled out the word before launching into: "It'll do a bit more than just that. You could, in theory, use one to take over the minds of everyone on an entire planet. And seeing as how you humans seem to jump at the opportunity to have your minds taken over…"

I shook my head in disbelief, "You mean to say that the whatcha-mah-callit can hack into minds?"

He gave me a funny look, one that I got a lot when I used a saying like "whatcha-mah-callit", and nodded. "So what do you two know?"

"I know I saw some lights about four months ago when I went out to watch a meteor shower. I've seen some pretty crazy colors in meteors before, but I've never seen ones that went in anything but a straight line and I've certainly never seen one that looked like it actually hit the ground," I said. "That's why I've been on a UFO tangent lately."

"And did those aliens turn up right after that?" the Doctor prompted.

"I _think_ so," I answered and then coming back to something he'd said a little earlier: "How did you know that a ship came down around here recently?"

"Oh, well, the TARDIS picked up on a distress call, an intergalactic SOS, so to speak, but I might have overshot the crash by a tiny bit. Anyway, you must have seen it. Where did you say you thought it crashed?"

"To the northwest of my house, but there were too many trees to be certain of exactly where," I paused, considering. "It might have come down near Edmore, that's west of here. Are you sure you didn't see anything, Jeni? You live out that way, don't you?"

"I told you, I didn't see anything," Jeni said, exasperated. "Let's face it: you're the only one in the whole school, Elisabeth, who would go outside in February to watch a meteor shower."

"Are you sure?" I asked again. It wouldn't have been the first time that Jeni had lied about something interesting happening.

"Well, I might have heard a tree come down in the woods, but I didn't _see_ anything," she retorted.

"Could that have been the ship I saw?" I asked the Doctor. I couldn't help but wonder at what I was saying. I was talking about UFOs as a matter-of-fact and was addressing a time traveler like it was something I did everyday. Evidently near-death experiences made me a little more outgoing.

"Good enough for me," he said and flipped a lever on the TARDIS's round console. "Allons-y!"

* * *

The machine made a loud, odd wheezing noise (a cross between metal grating against metal and swooshing) in time with the piston-like objects visible within the semi-translucent glowing column. That lasted a few moments before it abruptly came to stop with a loud thud. The Doctor ran right past Jeni and I in his hurry to get to the door. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why he'd want to leave a perfectly good spaceship to walk the ten miles from the school to Jeni's house.

"Aren't you coming?" asked the Doctor as he shrugged on a light brown trench coat by the door. Internally, I debated: The Doctor seemed to think that the TARDIS was a pretty safe place to be but, on the other hand, I didn't feel up to being left alone in an alien spaceship/time machine.

"Sure," I said unenthusiastically.

Jeni nodded eagerly. Of course, she was probably overjoyed with the turn of events that this day had taken.

We exited the TARDIS to find that we weren't in the same woods as we'd been in before. I could see Jeni's house from where I stood.

"We moved!" I exclaimed in surprise. "How'd we do that?"

Jeni shook her head and smiled like she'd already figured it out. She patted me on the shoulder and said, "Poor Elisabeth. Freaked out yet?"

"Hmm, I've had an alien pull a gun on me, traveled in a spaceship and discovered that the content of one of my books is _not _fiction – all in one day. No! I would _never _be freaked out," I said sarcastically.

The Doctor had produced his sonic screwdriver from the pocket of his coat and was currently pressing its one button. It made a high pitched buzz each time he tapped on it, but this time it didn't seem to cause any damage to anything. He held it up and turned in a slow circle. It buzzed noticeably louder when it was facing deeper into the forest. "It must have come down right over…"

He trailed off and sprinted off into the woods.

I had been starting to calm down, since it was a nice day out (sadly, this meant that I would have a sunburn on every bit of exposed skin) and the woods in bright sunlight had always struck me as a peaceful place to be. However, I wasn't calmed down enough to want to be left alone, so when Jeni began to follow the Doctor, I followed her.

"There can't be a spaceship around here," Jeni complained loudly. (Jeni never really said anything quietly, even when she whispered.) "Or my idiot brother and Kris would have found it by now."

I absentmindedly looked around. There was a clearing up ahead, but on one end of it many of the trees had the tops smashed out of them and others looked as if they had been snapped in half. Even so, the ground in the clearing had no indication of a large ship plowing into the ground at high speed. The only thing unusual about the ground was that it was abnormally flat and level.

"There are a lot of trees with the tops smashed out of them," I noted aloud for Jeni and the Doctor's benefit.

"Where's the crater then?" the Doctor muttered aloud to himself. "It has to be here somewhere."

"Well, there isn't one," Jeni grumbled. "Any idiot can see that."

"Obviously," I agreed as I walked out into the middle of the clearing. I supposed that its size was another thing that was odd about it: it must have been the size of a football field. The leaf litter didn't crunch under my tennis shoes like it should have, either. I turned and started to walk back to where Jeni was standing with her hands in her pockets when I suddenly tripped and fell forward. I managed to keep from smashing face first into the ground, but I would have bet that my hands were going to be a mess.

"What in the…?" I muttered.

My left leg was sunk up to my knee in solid ground!

* * *

**Author's Note: Again, I thank my reviewers and those who have subscribed to this story. I have to say, I was a bit skeptical of whether or not anyone would find it interesting. And as always, reviews are very, very welcome!**


	5. Chapter 5

"Cool!" Jeni exclaimed, showing little to no concern for my well-being, but that was to be expected from Jeni. "Does that machine give us superpowers?"

"Somehow, Jeni, I doubt that," I grumbled. After the initial shock of seeing my leg disappear into the ground, I had noticed that my foot was resting on what felt remarkably like metal. I stomped once to make sure and was rewarded with a hollow, metallic clang and a sore foot for my effort.

"I think I found something," I said a bit more loudly and then added: "Who knew that my amazing ability to find the only hole in a perfectly flat field would ever come in handy?"

I clamored out of the hole as the Doctor hurried over.

Jeni was doubled over laughing at me and my clumsiness.

I glared at her as I tried to brush nonexistent dirt off my jeans and hands.

In the meantime, the Doctor was examining the invisible hole in the ground with his sonic screwdriver.

"Ah, so we're standing on a ship's force-field and it's constructed a hologram to make it look as if there is nothing wrong with the crash site. A perception filter should have stopped us from noticing any subtle signs that there was something not right with the clearing," he muttered so quickly the words seemed to come out all in one big blur. "About the only way we'd have stumbled across this was to fall into it."

"Lucky me," I said sarcastically.

"Hmm, if I'm right and I normally am…" the Doctor muttered half to himself and half to us. He activated his screwdriver and the ground around us suddenly went from opaque to transparent. We seemed to be standing on thin air.

Below us was a spaceship that stretched from one end of the clearing to the other. It had two large wings and an overall shape that reminded me of, strangely, a fleur de lis. The hull was made out of a metal that reminded of me of chrome, at least in appearance. The nose of the ship was crumpled inward like the hood of a car that had been in a front end collision. The sides of the ship had deep scratches and gouges in it as well as dark streaks where the metal seemed to have been partially melted.

"Oh my -," I began, only to fall silent as I found myself at a complete loss for words.

Evidently, the hole in the force-field was actually the access point to a hatch into the ship. The Doctor hopped down onto it and pointed his screwdriver at the latch.

I grabbed Jeni's arm as she went to go past me. "Jeni… you have a spaceship in your backyard."

"I betcha that it legally belongs to my family," she said with a devious smile. I had the sudden vision of her in a courtroom arguing some fine print detail to a judge in order to keep the ship.

The Doctor had managed to open the hatch and had dropped down into the crashed ship.

_Why do I think that going into that ship is a bad idea? _I thought. _Probably because in every sci-fi film I've ever seen, when the not-so-important characters enter a creepy, crashed spaceship they end up becoming some space monster's meal._

Jeni didn't seem to share my concerns, because she had just dropped down into the ship, too.

_Of course_, I added, _in every horror movie I've ever seen, whenever somebody gets left behind because they think that it's oh-so-safe wherever they're at: that's when the ax-murder or whatever comes creeping up and…_

I looked around nervously and all of a sudden the tranquil forest didn't seem nearly as peaceful as it had before. Every tree and every shadow suddenly concealed something menacing that was just waiting for me to become separated from my protectors.

With an apprehensive gulp, I stepped down from the force-field and onto the hull of the ship. The metal was exceptionally slippery, but one did not live within two hundred miles of the forty-fifth parallel and not know how to keep from falling on slick surfaces.

I glanced down into the dark hole that the Doctor and Jeni had disappeared into. There was no ladder to assist in climbing down into the ship. Not being as brave as my friends and certainly being more afraid of heights, I sat down on the hull and slid my legs over the edge of the hatch and into the ship. I grabbed the edge of the hatch in a death grip and lowered myself down as far as I could. At this point I was stuck, I wasn't strong enough to haul myself back up and I still couldn't tell how far it was to the floor of the ship. I hung there for a moment before I screwed up the courage to release my death grip and drop down into the ship.

* * *

**Author's Note: I hope that this is a suitable cliffhanger. And schwans, not to worry, I'm not going to have the ground eat anyone! (They've already done that in an actual Doctor Who episode, although when I orginally wrote this I had yet to see that episode.)**


	6. Chapter 6

Fortunately, it wasn't that far of all fall, but I wasn't known for my coordination so when my bad knee (I was still banged up from track) gave way, I landed rather hard on my tailbone.

"Ow!" I yelped as I hit the floor.

It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the dim lighting, and as they did I saw that the Doctor and Jeni where already thirty or so feet down the corridor in front of me. Jeni didn't bother to look back to see what had made all the noise, but she'd known me long enough to know exactly how accident prone I was. The Doctor turned around, however, and asked, "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," I replied as I picked myself back up. Quietly to myself I murmured: "Just tried to bust my tailbone, _again_."

* * *

I broke into a jog to catch up with them.

Jeni grinned at me after I slowed to a walk at her side: "You are in a spaceship, Liz, and you're not freaking out. That's surprising."

"I'll freak out later, I promise," I assured her. It was an unusual quirk of my personality that I tended to freak out after the fact. "I just hope that my sugar doesn't bottom out on me."

Jeni glanced around about then and seemed to spot something. I figured out what it was about four seconds after she poked a button on the panel she'd found.

"Jeni!" I snapped in frustration. Why was it that I hung out with people that liked to poke random buttons?

"What?" Jeni asked looking confused with my outburst. "It said: 'lights'."

As if on cue, the corridor flooded with light.

"Really?" I asked. Curiosity overrode my natural skittishness and I hurried to look at the panel.

Each button on it was clearly labeled in English.

"That is really weird," I muttered as I ran my fingertips over the slightly raised lettering.

"What's weird about English?" Jeni asked giving me her infamous what-are-you-an-idiot look.

"It doesn't feel like English," I said, completely ignoring Jeni's glare, as I traced shapes with my fingers that did not correspond with the letters I saw.

"The TARDIS is translating for you," the Doctor explained. "It's not really written in English."

"So I see English, but it's not really English. Kind of like…"

"I'll see and hear every language as English?" Jeni interrupted in a tone that could only be described as one of immense relief.

"Yep," the Doctor confirmed.

The look of relief on Jeni's face intensified and I knew why: Jeni had trouble with English, never mind other _human _languages, so it was an immense relief to know that she did not have to try and understand a bunch of alien languages.

"Gift of tongues," I muttered to no one in particular.

Jeni tapped me on the shoulder: "So? How are you holding up?"

"Great," I answered as I grinned widely. "So what now? Do we go find whatever passes for a black box on a spaceship?"

Both Jeni and the Doctor looked taken aback by my sudden change in attitude.

"What?" I asked, a tad bit annoyed that they weren't as excited as I was.

"Now you _want _to go and explore?" Jeni asked. "I am still speaking to Elisabeth?"

"Hey!" I said, offended. "Like I'm going to pass up the chance to read and speak any language I happen to come across? Not going to happen."

The Doctor shrugged, probably because he had absolutely no idea what to make of that, and led the way deeper into the ship.

* * *

My head was spinning. On the one hand, I was terrified of aliens killing me at some point in the near future, but at the same time the idea of being able to read and speak any language I could ever hope to encounter was a dream come true.

Of course, the confirmation that humanity was not alone was something that couldn't be ignored.

Then there was the fact that here I was, Elisabeth the bookworm, having an honest-to-God adventure exploring a crashed alien spaceship. That was something that I had only ever daydreamed about and, well, once you got past the shock of it all, this wasn't so bad.

* * *

Despite the outward damage to the ship, there was little to no damage that I could see to the corridors we'd wandered through. The corridors were not the boxy rectangular sort that you would find in most buildings either. These corridors had curved walls that merged seamlessly in the center of the ceiling. For a ridiculous moment, I imagined that I was walking down the cardboard core of a paper towel roll that some little kid had cut in two lengthwise and then pasted on a flat piece of paper to serve as a floor.

The walls were an unfamiliar silver-white color that seemed to give off light. We passed by doors, although it took me a while to realize that they were there. The doors were exactly the same as the walls around them except for the fact that next to each one was a small panel, not unlike the one Jeni had found earlier.

The Doctor either did not see the doors we passed by or ignored them completely. I was inclined to believe the latter, as the Doctor did not seem the sort that would fail to notice something like that.

It seemed like a long time before we came to a halt in front of a dead end. My first assumption was that the Doctor had taken a wrong turn somewhere, but after a few seconds, I noticed that the dead end was not a dead end at all – it was a door.

This one was slightly different from the others because I could actually see the outline to it. However, the seams were dark black and the door seemed to be slightly bulged outwards, as if something from within had struck it with a large amount of force.

The Doctor didn't acknowledge this as he tapped away on the panel located on the wall next to the door.

There was slight hiss as the door unsealed and moved aside to admit us into the room beyond. The smell of burnt plastic assaulted me and I shoved my nose into the crook of my elbow to muffle the unpleasant odor.

* * *

**Author's Note: Yet another cliff hanger, I hope.**

**Any thoughts, readers? Any? If so, please feel free to leave them in the form of reviews.**


	7. Chapter 7

The room beyond the door was roughly oval and probably had been the flight deck at one time. It was somewhat difficult to tell, because the entire room was burnt almost beyond recognition. The walls inside had most likely once been the same color as that of the walls in the corridors, but now they were the color (and texture) of a charred log. There might have been some sort of pilot and copilot's chairs on the other side of the room in front of a long panel of controls, but now there were only two half melted lumps of metal and plastic. The only redeeming quality of the view laid out in front of me was there were no alien bodies.

"Looks like this ship was shot down," the Doctor stated as he stepped into the burnt room.

"By what?" asked Jeni. I wondered that, too, although I was more concerned with whether or not whoever had access to that weapon was after us. Jeni, on the other hand, would want to know the specifics about any weapon that could punch a hole through a force-field and cause this sort of damage. Of course, she'd want to know so she could build one of her own.

"From the looks of the damage: some sort of concentrated beta radiation burst with penetrating plasma casing," the Doctor rambled.

"A what?" I asked because I hadn't understood anything he'd said except for 'radiation'. "Radiation? Is it safe to be standing here?"

"A canon mounted on another ship did this," the Doctor explained at a more normal pace. "Whatever radiation there might have been is long gone by now. You won't get radiation sickness, I promise."

"Okay," I muttered. I was still riding on that weird confidence boost I'd gotten from my newfound ability to read and speak all languages but the fact that some sort of radiation had damaged and burnt this room had made me wary again.

"Let's go and take a look, shall we?" the Doctor said motioning us to follow him into the room.

He didn't wait to see if we would actually follow him and walked across the room to the flight controls for the ship.

I shrugged and looked over at Jeni. I pointed to the right side of the room and said, "I guess I'll start over here."

Jeni nodded and trotted over to the left side of the room.

I stepped into the room and internally cringed at the bizarre crunching sound made by the warped metal-plastic.

Surprisingly, there was not much to examine. The badly melted walls, floors, and ceiling contained no secret compartments or hidden passages. I eventually made my way to the console, at the far end of which the Doctor was working. He had opened it up and was picking through the internal components, although from the look of the melted circuit board he had dragged out of it, I doubted that there was anything salvageable contained within it.

I dropped down onto my hands and knees to check under the side of the console I had come to. I doubted that aliens that were sophisticated enough to invent a vehicle capable of traveling interstellar distances would also have my sense of organization and would shove anything of importance or value under the console but I figured that, since I had nothing better to do, I might as well check anyway.

Like everywhere else I had looked, I didn't see anything that wasn't melted beyond any hope of salvaging. I sighed and went to stand back up, but as I turned my head I noticed something glint out of the corner of my eye. I snapped my head back to stare at whatever had caught my eye. Whatever it was it was half buried in the melted floor and was well out of my reach.

I grumbled something unintelligible and crawled underneath the console. I grabbed hold of the object and slowly pried it free of the floor. The object was a translucent silver and gold sphere about the size of a shooter marble. It wasn't much but at least it was something. I started to turn around under the console but smashed my hand into something hard and sharp.

* * *

**Author's Note: Hmm, I don't have a lot to say about this chapter. At some point, I think I'm going to have to improve my knowledge of technobable... I suppose that goes with being more of a fan of fantasy than hard-core science fiction. By the way, any technobable I do include is complete gibberish. **

**Oh, and I apologize that this chapter is fairly short.**

**I just realized as I got ready to add the next chapter, that the big reveal is in the next chapter. Any guesses? For those of you that are new to this story, I'd be happy to hear what you think. Or if you'd rather not guess, go on ahead and read the next chapter. After all, I'm the one that supposed to tell you what happens, and not the other way around.**


	8. Chapter 8

"Ouch," I grumbled taking a look at my hand. Fortunately I hadn't managed to slice it open on - whatever it was. Satisfied that I wasn't bleeding, I looked around for the sharp object. It wasn't really an object, rather it was a deep dent in the floor similar to the one I had created when I had removed the imbedded sphere. The dent (with its lovely sharp edges) was about an inch and a half in width and about two and three quarters inches in length.

"Doctor!" I called. "Come look at this."

I heard a clatter of metal components being dropped and the sound of converse shoes crunching across the warped floor.

"What'd you find?" he asked as he crawled under the console to take a look.

I pointed out the dent in the floor. "If you ask me," I said, "it looks like something was here when the ship was shot down and the floor melted around it. Since then someone must have removed it."

He pulled out a pair of glasses and examined the dent carefully. He nodded solemnly and then grinned: "Very observant, Elisabeth. But who would have found this before us?"

He went to turn around and too late I warned: "Watch your head!"

The Doctor banged his head on the underside of the console which knocked free a cloud of ash that fell all over the two of us. I heard a snicker from Jeni. The Doctor didn't pause as he brushed the ash out of his hair and hopped to his feet asking: "Jeni, who would have been in this area before now?"

I was still coughing as I slowly crawled out from underneath the console and got to my feet.

"Do you think that the dent might have been from the Superhacker?" I asked as I absently shoved the sphere in my pocket and began the chore of knocking the grey ash off of my clothing and hair.

He nodded.

In the meantime, Jeni was still mulling over who had been in and around her home since the spaceship had come down in February.

"Kris, my family, and me," said Jeni firmly.

"And would any of them have found the ship?" asked the Doctor.

"I don't know," Jeni whined.

"You're lying, Jeni."

It took me several seconds to even realize that I had spoken and several more to work out what I had said. I never accused Jeni of lying, not outright. Oh, I knew that she did and sometimes I'd even realize when she was doing it, but I never called her on it.

Before I could work out the exact reason I'd blurted that, Jeni protested: "No, I'm not!"

"You'd accuse your brother or Kris or both, normally," the words flowed out of my mouth without my consent or even understanding of how they'd come to be in my head in the first place. Nonetheless, the statement was the truth. "So why didn't you?"

"They're not smart enough to find this spaceship," Jeni retorted, rolling her eyes.

"But you are," I said not altogether sure of what had come over me, but confident that what I was saying was accurate.

"Liz!" she hissed and looked at me meaningfully.

I continued, unabated, with a rush of words that were as much of a surprise to me as to everyone hearing them: "You didn't just hear it come down did you? And even if you didn't see it, you worked it out. You found the ship months ago and you found the Superhacker with it. That's how you ended up in Physics! You're a genius when it comes to tampering with things until they work for you, so you used it to hack the school's computer network. You changed your classes!"

Jeni glared at me for a long time before she relented and admitted: "Oh, all right. I thought… well… you know…"

For my part, I did know. Jeni was a secretive person and would no sooner admit she had an alien device on her to anyone than a politician would give a straight answer to a controversial question.

The Doctor just looked very annoyed with Jeni.

"So, where is it?" he demanded.

She opened her mouth to speak and I saw that she was going to give him a hard time.

I walked up to her and for the first time in since we'd become friends, I was livid. I didn't let it slip into my voice and very calmly said, "Jeni, where is it?"

Her mouth snapped shut at the look on my face and she slipped her hand into her pocket to pull out her cell phone. She reluctantly handed it over to me and offhandedly muttered: "It looks like that now. It looked different when I found, but it still works as far as I can tell."

"Jeni, why _in the world _would you hide it?" I asked letting a little of my frustration leak into my voice.

She'd recovered from the shock of seeing my endless patience reach its end and gave me a glare: "The aliens back at the school drew guns on us. I didn't think it would be a good idea to dance up and down and say: 'Oh-oh I have it!' And we don't have the faintest idea who he is or what he wants except for what he claims. How are we to know that he won't use it to take over? He's a little too knowledgeable about all of this alien stuff. Hell, he has a spaceship! He claims to be a time traveler. You're a little naïve, Elisabeth, and you're very trusting, but are you sure you want to hand that over?"

I wanted to argue with Jeni, but most of what she said struck a chord with me. I was basing my judgment of the Doctor on what I'd read in a UFO book and, if truth be told, I had no good reason to do so. Other than the uncanny resemblance of the TARDIS to the time machine in the book and his adoption of the name 'the Doctor' the moment I'd guessed it, I didn't have any proof that he was who he said he was. Heck, if I believed the book he was a centuries old alien although I doubted that. After all, wouldn't he look a little less human, if he were? I didn't doubt that my first impression of the TARDIS was correct, that _it_ was alien, but that didn't necessarily mean that the Doctor was alien. For all we knew, he could be working for some government or agency that had gotten hold of an alien ship and figured out how to use it. And if he was a time-traveller, like he had implied he was, he could be working for some group we'd never heard of, didn't even exist yet, and we couldn't even begin to guess at its aims in that case.

"Jeni has a point, Doctor," I said very slowly as I tried to stop my voice from shaking uncontrollably.

The Doctor frowned when he heard the fear permeating my words and looked at the tiny, harmless looking device I was still holding in my hands. "Well, then, that's easily remedied. Those aliens…"

A grin split his face as he gleefully shouted, "Oh! I knew I recognized that accent! It's obvious now: they're Aegypians. An entire race of scavengers, although they're probably not responsible for shooting down this Pician ship. Not much for taking the offensive, the Aegypians. But they make pretty good interstellar garbage collectors. I'm rambling again, aren't I?"

Jeni and I nodded.

"Anyway," he said, "if you're worried about it, why don't you keep an eye on that. Just don't lose it. Or let _her_ have it back."

Jeni glanced at me hopefully. I glared at her. Although I understood her actions at the school, it didn't mean that I had forgiven her for getting me into this mess in the first place.

By the time I'd glanced back at the Doctor, he'd already moved onto the next thing. He had opened up the panel in the corridor and was messing with the wiring. He pulled out his screwdriver and used it to merge together a couple of wires that were obviously not meant to go together. I guessed he was in a hurry, because he didn't put it back in his pocket and instead held it between his teeth in the same manner that someone who is sewing would hold the extra pins.

"What are you doing?" I asked, not at all certain I really wanted to know the answer.

"I'm going to blow this ship up," he muttered through the screwdriver.

"What?" I shouted having already made up mind that this was the sort of answer I hadn't wanted to hear.

Jeni's eyes went wide. She loved explosions (especially when she caused them) but not when she was at risk from one.

"I can't just leave it to be reverse engineered. Trust me, that would not be a good thing. I suggest that you get out of here," the Doctor said. Something in his tone suggested that he was still annoyed with Jeni.

Jeni seemed to process that faster than I did, who was still working on 'blow the ship up'. She grabbed my arm and said urgently, "Come on."

"What about you?" I asked the Doctor.

"Oh, don't worry about me," he said dismissively. "I'll be fine."

"Come on!" Jeni yanked on my arm again.

I nodded once and started running. I wasn't much faster than Jeni, but somehow I managed to remember the way back to the hatch and beat her to the spot underneath it. I looked up and to my horror realized there was absolutely no way to climb up to it.

* * *

**Author's Note: I've finally decided on a pattern to follow with updating. That is so long as school work doesn't get in the way... I'll update on Wednesdays and Fridays if I can.**

**Anyway, did anyone guess that Jeni had the "Superhacker" all along? I tried to hint at it. Or did I take you completely by surprise?**


	9. Chapter 9

"There's got to be a way up," I mumbled. I may have been terrified but I also had a stubborn streak and I absolutely refused to give up now. Frantically I spun in a circle looking for something, anything that might help. I noticed the panel then. Since I was desperate I sprinted over to it, praying that there was something on it that could help me. I read the descriptions in the same sort of panicked frenzy that I usually reserved for the last fifteen questions on the ACT when the five minutes left was called.

"Emergency hatch access!" I shouted in exultation and wasted no time in pressing the appropriate button.

I twirled around as I heard a mechanical moan. The metal in the wall under the hatch was slowly pushing out at regular intervals, creating a ladder leading up to the hatch.

Jeni raced around the corner at that moment. She saw the ladder and raced for it. Since she was faster getting to it than I was, she began to hurriedly climb it as I hurried across the corridor. I stopped at the bottom of the alien ladder to shove the Superhacker in my pocket with my pencils, the sphere, eraser, extra lead, and my MP3 player. As soon as it was secure, I hastily climbed the rungs and pulled myself up and onto the hull of the ship. The moment I was on my feet, Jeni yanked me onto the force-field and both of us took off at a sprint.

We darted through the woods with an abandon born of adrenaline and fear. For once in my life, I didn't mind the branches tangling my long hair and the thorny brush stabbing into my legs through my blue jeans. That didn't mean that I was any more graceful than I usually was. My ankles twisted and turned as my feet found the uneven ground difficult to negotiate. I stumbled and staggered as Jeni, with her shorter stature (thus making it easier for her to avoid low hanging branches) and superior balance, sped along in front of me.

Blind panic caused me to not realize that Jeni had come to a halt and I smashed into her back. Usually that wouldn't have been a problem, but I usually wasn't running flat out at a speed that might have enabled me to actually place in the four-hundred meter run had I managed to summon this sort of speed during a track meet. Jeni and I both slammed into the side of the TARDIS, which was the reason Jeni had stopped in the first place.

"Sorry," I muttered as Jeni slowly got back up.

Surprisingly, she didn't scream at me. She turned and yanked futilely on the door of the TARDIS.

"It won't open," she grunted as she pulled with all her strength on the door.

I grabbed hold of the door as well, although I knew that I wasn't any stronger than Jeni was, and gave it a few good tugs.

It was then, while we were desperately trying to gain entrance to the TARDIS, that the Pician ship exploded.

I spun, feeling the concussive force of the sound in my throat and chest, and watched the massive fireball lash out against the blue sky. Even from where we were, I had to shield my eyes against the sudden blast of hot wind.

"Do you think…?" I began to ask, before my nerve gave out.

"Do I think what?" Jeni asked. She'd produced lock picking tools from the tiny backpack that she always carried with her and begun to work on the TARDIS's lock.

I didn't finish my question.

"Do I think what? You know I really hate it when you people do that! When you start a sentence, finish it!" she demanded, having already forgotten about our argument in the ship.

"Do you think that he made it?" I asked quietly. The question hung in the air for a long moment.

If Jeni realized how very sincere that question was and how very much it mattered to me that her answer be comforting and reassuring, she certainly didn't express it. In a tone that was uncomfortably close to a retort, she replied: "How would I know?"

* * *

**Author's Note: It seems as if I have less and less to say... The only thing I want to get out of the way with this chapter is the reminder that this being told through the eyes of someone who has very limited knowledge of the Doctor, so of course she doesn't realize that this sort of close call is pretty typical of the Doctor.**

**I should also thank schwans and MadnessMakesUsInteresting for reviewing the last few chapters. I love hearing what all of you think of this, both what you like about it and what you would like me to try to improve. (And I'm sure for everything that's good about this story, there's a dozen little things that could have made it better.)**


	10. Chapter 10

"The Device, humans!"

The voice came from behind me and to my left. I winced; if the word human being used to describe Jeni and I hadn't been enough to indicate who was there, I also recognized the voice. At that moment, I felt the irrational logic of a child who feared the monster under the bed or in the closet. So long as I didn't look at the nightmare, it wasn't there and couldn't harm me. The problem was that I wasn't a child and I wasn't having a nightmare. This was real and I was almost certainly about to die.

"Jeni," I whispered with my last shreds of hope. "Please, tell me that you've picked that lock."

"No," she replied.

"The Device!" the alien – the Aegypian demanded.

Very slowly I turned around. The Aegypian was alone and standing about seven feet away. For the first time, whatever alien technology that had disguised it either was not in use or no longer worked on us. It had mottled grey skin the texture of crinkled paper. Its eyes had mercury colored irises and red pupils.

If the fact that it was alone had raised any hopes of Jeni and I being able to overpower it, the Aegypian ended them as it raised its repaired gun and pointed it at my head.

The situation was hopeless.

Right then, though, I was tired, scared out of my wits and really didn't care what the consequences would be for what I was going to do: "We don't have it. And the Doctor's destroyed your Pician ship. You have no further reason to be here."

The Aegypian didn't buy my lie and said as much: "You are lying, human. But my bothers and I have been observing you and your friend. You are a cowardly example of your species. You will not risk your own life. As for your friend: she is an opportunist and will also preserve her life at whatever cost."

The alien smiled, showing crooked, yellowed teeth: "I will ask again: where is the Device?"

I narrowed my eyes. My patience, something I was renowned for at the school, had finally run out and my temper was starting to get the better of me. All my life I had been smart and cautious. I didn't take stupid, unnecessary risks. I wouldn't deny that I could be easily frightened. But there was one thing I absolutely refused to be, if it was going to be the last thing I ever would be: and that was a coward.

Even with my temper at its boiling point, I forced myself to look at the options. On the one hand, I could refuse to tell the Aegypian where the Superhacker was, but I knew that it would kill us if we did so. On the other hand, I could hand it over and hope that it would leave us alive. I knew that it was a long shot…

"I have it in my pocket," I admitted. I shoved my hand in my pocket and rummaged around a bit. I slowly pulled out the device and watched as the alien's eyes locked onto my hand.

"Hand it over, **now**! Human," the alien ordered taking a step forward with one hand extended to take the device from me.

I didn't want the Aegypian any closer to me than it already was. Panicking, I held the device up and over my head: "No closer, you hear me! Or I'll smash it!"

The Aegypian froze, not willing to antagonize what I imagined it saw as a frightened, cornered and therefore unpredictable animal.

Realizing that it wouldn't allow the device to be damaged, I tried to sound confident as I demanded: "I'm not going to hand this thing over, not until I know that I'm not going get shot." I failed miserably because even I could hear my voice crack and shake.

The Aegypian didn't lower its gun. "Perhaps I will shoot you and retrieve the Device from your corpse."

My eyes widened at that threat. I threw the device in the direction of the Aegypian.

The Aegypian lowered the gun as it spun to snatch the device from the air. Jeni saw the opportunity as it presented itself. She ran forward the moment the gun was no longer pointed at me and grabbed hold of it, twisting it out of the alien's grip.

The alien was so busy trying to keep the device from striking the ground that it didn't even try to fight back and stop Jeni from taking its gun. By the time it had finally gotten a grip on the device, Jeni had pointed the alien weapon at its previous owner. Surprisingly, the alien didn't seem upset with this. It smiled and said: "Too bad. You've lost."

I was puzzled up until the moment it slapped a button on what I would have thought was a wristwatch and disappeared.

Jeni lowered the weapon and looked at me. Her face was a mask of shock and surprise.

I sank to the ground in front of the TARDIS. I was shaking something awful as I thought about what I had just done.

* * *

**Author's Note: Okay. I'm managing to update on schedule, that's amazing. I'm not sure if there's anything I want to comment on in this chapter. I know there are a few lines in here that might be a bit confusing and if they are... I take the fault there. I like reading in third person and writing in first; sometimes I think that this might negatively affect my writing.**

**Anyway, any guesses on what's going to happen in the next chapter(s)? I love to read what _you _think. Or how about this: Is there any lines in this or any other chapter that you find particularly funny? I'd like to know if any of them are the same as the ones I _meant _to be funny.**

**The next update should be on Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2010.**


	11. Chapter 11

I couldn't believe that I had done… that! I felt dizzy, lightheaded, and nauseated all at once. It took a minute to realize that my blood sugar levels must have just taken a massive drop.

"Why in the world would you give the Superhacker to them?"

I jerked my head in the direction of the voice and smiled at the sight of the Doctor, despite his tone. He was just emerging from an exceptionally tangled bit of undergrowth and nonchalantly sweeping the last of the soot from the explosion off of his suit.

"They left, didn't they?" Jeni pointed out sounding annoyed at the fact that he had to dared to be annoyed with me.

"With a powerful piece of alien technology that they _will _sell to the highest bidder," the Doctor fumed, "and I can guarantee that whoever they sell it to won't just use it to change around their classes."

I began to giggle hysterically, "Really? They're going to sell that?"

"Yes!" the Doctor shouted as I giggled even harder. "Do realize what you might have done?"

I managed to stop giggling and found the nausea was getting worse, "Oh, I don't feel too well right now," I mumbled and barely resisted the urge to dry heave. I shoved my hand in my pocket and rummaged around with my shaking hands while Jeni shouted furiously at the Doctor:

"Liz did really well considering how scared she must have been!" Jeni stomped up to the Doctor and jabbed her finger into his chest to accent every word. I doubted that even Jeni would have intimidated the Doctor, except in her other hand she was still holding the gun and was absently waving it around as she continued. Even so, I smiled as the short girl managed to intimidate the tall man. "She managed to make them leave without getting us killed! You sure as hell weren't around to help!"

I found what I was searching for and withdrew what might have been an iPhone from my pocket. I tossed it as carefully as I could toward the Doctor, given the fact that I couldn't steady my hands. He caught it just as I muttered: "I think that my sugar just hit rock bottom."

If Jeni had looked shocked earlier, the look on her face now eclipsed that expression easily. "You bluffed him. You… bluffed… him." She shook her head as if to try to dislodge the impossible thought that had become stuck in her mind. Managing to break away from the broken record she had become for the last several seconds, she asked, "What did you give that alien anyway?"

"My MP3 player," I grumbled. I wasn't overly happy about that, either. I'd spent one-hundred and twenty dollars to acquire my little Insignia Pilot and bankrupted myself for several months. Out of pure habit, I added: "_Someone_ owes me a new one, or one hundred and twenty bucks."

The Doctor had taken advantage of Jeni's distraction to slip past her and walk up to me. He held out a hand, offering to help me back onto my feet. I was glad that my stomach had quit, because I would have been very embarrassed if I'd thrown up right then.

I took his hand, accepting his aid. I was glad that I had, too, because no sooner than I was on my feet than I was hit by a sudden wave of dizziness that would have sent me sprawling forward had it not been for the Doctor steadying me.

"Thanks," I muttered, a little embarrassed that I was so dizzy that I couldn't even stand without help.

He nodded and let go of my shoulders. I swayed a little, but managed to stay upright.

Realizing that I was standing in front of the doors to the TARDIS, I staggered out of the way so the Doctor could unlock them.

The Doctor did so, and as he pushed open the TARDIS's door he asked: "Why did you have an MP3 player in your pocket?"

I managed a grin. "I forgot to take it out of my pocket this morning."

The Doctor escorted me inside the TARDIS, evidently a little concerned that I was going to keel over at any moment, as I continued: "Sadly, I didn't think to add any snacks to my pocket's inventory today. I don't suppose that you'd have anything I could eat in this thing?"

He seemed not to hear the question as he had me sit down on the seat next to the console.

Jeni had followed right behind us and now came to stand next to me.

The Doctor grinned as if something had just occurred to him. "I'll be right back." To Jeni he added with a glare, "Don't touch anything."

With that he disappeared into the depths of the TARDIS.

* * *

Jeni shuffled uncomfortably and finally worked up to admitting: "That was very clever, bluffing like that."

I shook my head. "It wouldn't have worked if you hadn't gotten his gun. That was a really huge, stupid oversight on my part."

I suddenly looked at her, "Speaking of guns – " I held out my still shaking hand in an obvious request for the weapon she was still holding.

Jeni pouted a little. My hand stayed where it was.

"Jeni – " I warned.

She placed the gun on my palm.

I carefully placed the gun on the seat next to me.

"You are no fun, sometimes, Liz," she complained.

"I know," I said cheerily and then added in a more serious tone, "but someone's got to keep an eye on you."

"I still get to borrow that conscience of yours?" she asked quietly, perhaps realizing for the first time that she might have ruined our friendship with her actions today.

"Ugh! You without 'your' conscience," I joked. "What would you do without me?"

"I dunno," she admitted, shrugging. "Destroy the world."

"Sounds about right!" I managed to say before we both dissolved into laughter.

* * *

The Doctor reappeared about the same time as our laughter began to die down.

"What's so funny?" he asked looking thoroughly puzzled as he handed me a bag of "jelly babies".

"Inside joke," I said in way of explanation as I examined one of "jelly babies". I would have thought they were gummy bears if it weren't for the label…

"Oh," he said.

"These won't kill me right?" I asked before I shoved a handful of the multicolored candies into my mouth.

"No! Of course not," he said looking hurt that I would even think him capable of attempting to poison me with alien food.

"Just checking," I said and popped the treat into my mouth. As I suspected, it not only looked a lot like a gummy bear but tasted like one as well. I devoured a few dozen before the shaking began to subside.

* * *

**Author's Note: We're getting down to the last part of this story. I'm not quite done, I might have enough for two or three more chapters, depending on how I choose to break it up.**

**Quick question for those of you that have read this story. Should I have the Doctor ask Jeni and Elisabeth to travel with him or should I simply wrap this up and let them become more one-off companions? I could write the end either way. (Be forewarned, a sequel could take some time and may become a crossover...)**

**I've also added a poll on my profile asking the same question. I'm afraid I don't think I'll be updating tomorrow or even Saturday, but that ought to give you some time to take the poll. I can guarantee that I will update by Sunday, 9/19.**


	12. Chapter 12

"So," the Doctor said as he began to flip switches and twist dials on the TARDIS's console. "I should get the two of you back to the school."

It was at that moment that I realized how long I'd been keeping my mom waiting. "Oh no!" I moaned. "My mom is going to kill me."

"Why?"

"Do you have any idea how long I've kept her waiting? I'm a dead woman walking," I replied in a tone bordering on hysteria. "Maybe I'll get really lucky and she's already left for home."

"I could take you straight home," the Doctor suggested. "Don't know if it'll do much good, but at least you won't have to walk. I could try to explain to her…"

"Oh god no!" I shouted. "I'd rather not have you try to explain. Trust me, I'd rather take whatever punishment she dishes out than deal with explaining…" I shook my head and indicated the impossible interior of the TARDIS, "this. That and the fact my mom's pretty handy with a twelve gauge and exceptionally cynical…"

The Doctor nodded. "The school, then?"

I nodded, while Jeni said, "You could drop me off at the library."

The Doctor didn't answer Jeni; instead he twisted a knob or two and yanked down a lever. The TARDIS began to make the strange sound that I now knew meant that it was moving. As before, the sound only lasted for a few moments and ended with a large thud.

"Here you are," the Doctor said as he indicated the door.

I jumped to my feet and walked as quickly as possible to the door. I pushed it open and saw that he'd managed to land the TARDIS in the middle of my physics classroom. I glanced at the unchanged room with a strange sort of amazement. It didn't seem possible that the room could appear the same when it had seen Aegypians try to murder us. It did, though. "Mr. Smith" was still written on the board, the chairs were still messily scattered around the three rows of tables, and my binder and textbooks were still carefully stacked where I had left them.

I hurriedly grabbed my things and ran out the door of the classroom. I sprinted to my locker and spun the com. I muttered the numbers as I twisted the dial: "15-31-5." I yanked the locker's door open and hurriedly tossed my textbooks into it. I jerked out my backpack and shoved my binder into it. I zipped it shut and swung it onto my back while I grabbed my flute and my lunchbox. At that moment I heard the unique sound of the TARDIS departing.

I ran as fast as I could back to the physics room but only arrived in time to see the police box fade into thin air.

I'd rather hoped to say goodbye and timidly asked the empty room, "Doctor? Jeni? Anyone here?"

I shrugged my shoulders, turned and walked at my normal slow pace out of the room heading for the parking lot.

My mom was still sitting out there, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel impatiently.

* * *

"Mom, can we go to the library, please?" I asked. It was amazing that even after standing my ground against an alien that wouldn't have thought twice about shooting me; I was still positively terrified of my ordinary, human mother when she was angry. Oh, well, some things never change.

My mother was giving me the Look (otherwise known as the Evil Eye) and replied in a sharp tone, "Why?"

She'd had a full blown conniption when I'd finally made it out to the car. I'd been screamed at for a full five minutes before I could mutter an apology and then an additional four minutes before she'd allowed me to give my excuse. I'd told her that the Quizbowl coach had needed me to help her after school and I had completely lost track of the time. That had placated her enough to allow for my carefully worded request.

"I was kind of hoping to pick up my books that came in," I said timidly.

"Fine, but you had better never…"

* * *

Jeni was at the library with her family when we got there. She waved me over when she saw me. She shouted almost gleefully, "Liz! You'll never believe it!"

"What?" I asked quietly, trying not to draw any more attention to myself than had already been by Jeni's loud voice in the otherwise silent library. I hoped to high heaven that she would not mention our adventure. That was _the _absolute last thing I needed right now: to be caught in a lie by my mother.

"There's been an explosion right by my house and they're worried about chemicals and stuff…" she said hurriedly. "My brother is gonna go stay with one of his friends 'cause we're not allowed to go back home just yet. You think your parents would mind if I stayed with you for a day or two?"

I looked over at my mom, who had heard every word Jeni had said in her too loud voice, and asked, "Can she?"

My mom frowned slightly and said, "I suppose, if it's alright with Jeni's parents…" She trailed off and went to confirm with Jeni's parents that it was okay for her to stay over for a few days. It was.

* * *

We set Jeni up in the living room with the hide-a-bed. Since it wasn't a school night we could stay up as long as we liked with the stipulation that once someone went to bed we had to be quiet. By unspoken agreement, neither Jeni nor I spoke about what had happened until after my sister finally trotted off to bed at around eleven forty.

The moment she was safely out of earshot I whispered to Jeni, "How did you get to the library so fast?"

"The Doctor dropped me off," Jeni said with a shrug.

"Okay… and how did he manage to land the TARDIS at the library without being noticed?"

"I dunno, he just landed the Ta – time machine thing in that field behind the library," she replied.

"Today has just been too crazy," I muttered. "Do you think anyone will realize that there was a spaceship in your backyard?"

"I don't know," Jeni admitted. "But I doubt that the government would let anyone know about it even if someone did figure it out."

I nodded, "Yeah, governments are good at covering things like that up."

We sat in silence for a while before Jeni finally inquired, "You know, Elisabeth, I never asked: Who is the Doctor?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "To be honest, I don't know. A time traveler, I guess, and, if that book was right, an alien. Other than that the book was kind of sparse on facts about him. Most of what it said was that he turns up at events that history looks back at and calls disasters. It gave some examples."

"Oh," she replied.

Again we lapsed into silence with both of us wrapped up in our own thoughts about what had happened.

The grandfather clock struck midnight and above the bongs we heard a very particular sound that started my golden retriever barking.

I leapt out of the chair I'd been sitting in and raced for the backdoor. I flung open the door to the garage, where my dog barking at the outside door with her hackles raised. I called her over and grabbed her muzzle saying, "Shush, shush, Bailey-girl. No. No, you be good. Shh." With a few half-hearted growls, Bailey quieted down. I let go of her muzzle, smiled and in the gooey tones most people use with their dogs I praised, "Good girl. There's my good Bailey-girl. You're such a good doggy."

While I had been calming Bailey, Jeni had managed to put on her shoes and run out of the garage. I shoved my feet into my running shoes now and ran out after her.

She hadn't gone far, just to the end of the cement at the corner of house facing the road. She was staring out into the front yard.

There between the two branches of the U-shaped driveway sat a blue police box and stepping out of it was a tall, thin man with messy, brown hair in a brown coat, a blue, pinstriped suit with grey converse shoes.

* * *

**Author's Note: Only one more chapter left after this. I'm going to leave the poll up until Wednesday, so you can voice your opinion on whether or not Jeni and/or Elisabeth should travel with the Doctor. Thus far I've only had two votes and two reviews with opinions on the matter. **

**As always, I thank everyone that reviewed.**


	13. Chapter 13

I glanced over at Jeni, half thinking that I should confirm what I was seeing with her, and then I thought better of it and took a strange little hop into my bizarre sprint. I could hear a second set of footsteps on the gravel behind me, so I knew that Jeni had gotten the same idea.

I came to a skidding halt in front of the Doctor, who was just finishing locking the TARDIS, not that there was anyone here that would steal it… or rather there wouldn't have been if I hadn't invited Jeni over.

He turned around and smiled widely at us: "I seem to have found something on my chair." He pulled out a rectangular object out of his pocket, which he shouldn't have been able to fit into the pocket at all. Of course, the inside of the TARDIS shouldn't have been able to be larger than the outside, so I wasn't going to point it out.

I recognized it. "My book!" I smiled gratefully as he handed it back to me. "Thanks. I thought there was something I'd forgotten. I _always _forget something."

"And something else – " he rummaged around in the pockets of his coat for a few seconds. "I believe I owed you a new MP3 player."

With that he handed me a shiny, new MP3 player.

"3,000 gigabytes on that," he added. "Do me a favor and don't show that off to Apple, if you would."

"No problem," I muttered in awe of the little music player. Suddenly the manners my mother had drilled into me since I was two took over and I began to feel guilty about accepting such a generous gift. "Thank you. I mean, I was only joking about that… you didn't need to… I can't possibly…"

Jeni recognized the symptoms of my conscience, elbowed me in the side, and explained: "She's 'guilt tripping' herself. Don't take it personally."

"I am?" I asked. I blushed stupidly. "Sorry."

"I better get going," the Doctor said suddenly when the conversation lapsed into silence for a little too long. "There's a lot of universe out there to see."

"Oh," I said. I wasn't one for being too "touchy-feely" as I sometimes thought of it, but since it was doubtful that I would see the Doctor again, I said very quickly, before my nerve could give out: "Thanks for saving us back at the school." I thought about giving the Doctor a hug, but my nerve failed before I could do more than take a step closer. The Doctor surprised me by guessing what I had meant to do and giving me a bear hug that reminded me strongly of hugging my cousin Patrick.

"You know," he said I stepped back to stand right next to Jeni. "You could come with me. Travel anywhere in time and space." He smiled a little wider and added the words that I recognized as my own: "See all those events that really changed the world."

"I don't know," I said as I took another step back. Part of me, the adventurous part that had really taken charge today was very tempted by the offer. The more reasonable, sensible part of my mind reminded me how dangerous taking up such an offer would be.

Jeni, on the other hand, didn't even pause to consider: "Of course we want to come!" She had said that at the exact same moment I had muttered my indecisive reply.

I had the strangest feeling that the Doctor really hadn't been extending that invitation to Jeni, the girl who liked guns and explosions and violence just a little too much, and the doubtful look he gave her confirmed that.

Jeni usually didn't notice looks like the one she was receiving from the Doctor, but at that moment she seemed to understand that I was her ticket aboard the TARDIS. She looked over to me and did something very un-Jeni-like: She begged. "Please, Elisabeth, as if anything would hurt you while we're keeping an eye out for you."

I looked from the Doctor and the TARDIS to my house to the TARDIS and back again. How often had I dreamed of this exact sort of chance? How often had I wished that my daydreams of heroism were real? Could I, boring, bookworm Elisabeth, really manage to travel with the Doctor and my best friend? And could I live with the regret if I chose not to?

It was that last question that answered my internal debate.

"Stay right here," I ordered the Doctor as I spun on my heel on ran back to the house. Over my shoulder I shouted: "Don't you dare leave me behind!"

* * *

I didn't bother to take my shoes off when I ran into the house. I sprinted through the family room, the kitchen, the hallway, up the stairs and into my bedroom. I was suddenly glad that I had packed my bags the night before in preparation for a family vacation to a little cabin my grandmother owned up north. I grabbed my carry-on filled with my favorite novels. (Whether or not I was going to go on adventures, I was still Elisabeth the bookworm and had a reputation to uphold.) I picked up my suitcase filled with clothes, my extra toothbrush and hairbrush, hair bands, and my retainer. (I was not going to sacrifice my five grand worth of orthodontic work either.) I also grabbed my laptop in its case. After all, if I was going to be time traveling I was going to have to write down what had happened, if for no other reason than that it would be complicated remembering where and when I'd been if I didn't.

I trotted down the stairs and stopped at the landing. I sat down my bags and slipped into the living room for a moment. I found a piece of paper on the desk that our computer sat on and wrote a note to my parents:

**_I've gone out with Jeni and a mutual friend. Don't worry; I'll probably be back before you wake up. I'll give you a call soon if not._**

I thought for what felt like a long time before signing it. _Just in case… _I thought.

**_Love,_**

**_Elisabeth_**

_I really don't say that often enough_, I thought as I realized that I couldn't even remember the last time I had said the L-word to anyone, family or otherwise. _Almost being killed does put things in perspective, doesn't it?_

I picked up my bags and dropped the note on the kitchen counter on my way to the backdoor. I stopped at the backdoor to grab my backpack, since I had homework to do and, being a straight-A student, I had issues with the idea of not getting my homework done on time.

On my way out of the backdoor I patted Bailey on the head and told her that she was the best dog in whole wide world, which probably wasn't true but wasn't the point. I locked the door and sprinted as quickly as I could back to the TARDIS.

The Doctor wasn't standing outside the TARDIS anymore but the door was ajar and I could see a bit of the impossible interior. Since my things were threatening to escape my grip and fall on the ground I hurried inside and dumped them off to one side. I figured that the Doctor would tell me where I could put my junk soon enough.

The Doctor was standing at the controls and Jeni was sitting on the chair nearby. I turned and shut the door of the TARDIS.

The moment the door was closed behind me the Doctor grinned brightly as if I had just made his day. "So," he said enthusiastically. "Where do you want to go?"

His enthusiasm must have been infectious because I smiled right back and said: "Wherever you want to take us."

* * *

**Author's Note: That's it. Really it is. The End. I get to mark the story complete now, isn't that strange? At least until I talk my friend into finishing the sequel, or I give up and write one on my own. I left a few little things to follow up, of course. Who really shot down the Pician ship and what is that sphere that Elisabeth picked up and has conveniently forgotten about? Just to give a couple examples.**

**The final results for the poll was two votes for both Jeni and Elisabeth to accept an invitation to travel with the Doctor, one vote for only Elisabeth and two reviews for both and one review for only Elisabeth.**


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